Can Obama change U.S. political map?
By: John Fortier April 8, 2008 08:08 PM EST

Barack Obama threatens to drive political cartographers crazy. By attracting young people and African-Americans, he believes he can turn red states blue and upend our relatively stable political map. Obama may well win the November election on a wave of Democratic turnout and enthusiasm, but he will likely find that states don’t change their political stripes very easily.

The 2000 and 2004 elections were remarkably similar. Forty-seven states voted for the same party in both elections. Only New Hampshire, which switched from Republican in 2000 to Democrat in 2004, and Iowa and New Mexico, which moved in the other direction, changed sides.

But in a larger sense, the political map has not only been stable in the past two elections, it has also been relatively immune to sudden shifts over the past 60 years. There have been blowout Republican wins such as those in 1984 and 1972, when almost all states voted for the GOP, and in 1964, when the vast majority of states voted for Democrats.

In a recent study of presidential elections since 1944, my colleague Tim Ryan and I found that states’ partisan leanings tend to move with the national popular vote rather than change wildly based on the candidates. Imagine a state that leans 10 percentage points toward a Republican when the national popular vote is 50-50. If a Democrat wins the national vote by 15 points, he or she will likely win that state by 5 points. If a Republican wins the national vote by 10 points, he or she will win the state by 20 points.

There are some exceptions to this rule. The South was particularly volatile before the 1980s, shifting its votes to Republicans, Democrats and Dixiecrats. Presidential candidates can affect the voting patterns of their home states. And states can change their political allegiances over time, but it’s usually through a slow process of political evolution, not a dramatic shift.

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There is really only one recent example of a significant map shift that had major consequences: West Virginia in 2000. Prior to the Bush-Gore election, West Virginia had been a very safe Democratic state, voting 3.5 percent to 8 percent over the Democratic national average. In 2000, George W. Bush won West Virginia 53 percent to 47 percent.

In 2004, West Virginia was even more solidly in the Bush camp. If Gore had won West Virginia in 2000, he would have been our 43rd president. In a nutshell, Bush and Karl Rove saw that West Virginia was a heavily white state with socially conservative values and worries that environmentalism might do further damage to the coal industry. In hindsight, this makes perfect sense, but in election after election, both parties assumed this was a safe Democratic state.

So can Obama change the partisan leaning of states in 2008 like Bush did in West Virginia? Probably not.

First, look to the Southwest, which is moving toward Democrats. Over time, Hispanic immigration may move states like Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico into the Democratic column. But unfortunately for Obama, Republicans will likely nominate Sen. John McCain, who hails from Arizona and whose stance on immigration makes him less objectionable to Hispanic voters.

Second, what about the South? Obama has hinted that a rise in black turnout could put Southern states in play. Reliably Republican Mississippi has a population that is close to 37 percent African-American, the highest percentage of any state, but even a huge increase in black participation would not make up for the fact that Bush won the state by 20 points in 2004.

Perhaps the most talked about state that could change its stripes is Virginia. First Mark Warner and now Tim Kaine, both Democrats, have occupied the governor’s mansion. Democrats control the state Senate. In the 111th Congress, Virginia will likely have two Democratic senators. Northern Virginia is trending Democratic, with once solidly Republican Fairfax County voting for John F. Kerry in 2004.

Democrats hope that Obama’s dual pull among African-Americans — who account for about 20 percent of the state — and the young, educated and independent voters of Northern Virginia will turn this state blue. But Bush won Virginia by more than 8 percentage points and more than 260,000 votes in 2004. If the black vote increased by 20 percent, or approximately 140,000 votes, and if Obama doubled Kerry’s margin of victory in Northern Virginia from about 80,000 to 160,000, he would still fall short.

The problem for Obama is that the states with large percentages of black voters or upscale and educated voters are generally states that are not very competitive.

Obama may win Republican states such as Arizona, Colorado and Virginia if he wins the national popular vote by more than 5 percent. But don’t expect him to change the map in a close election.

John Fortier is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.